Schools Funded By Gates and Zuckerberg Ordered Closed In Uganda (cnn.com)

Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg are two investors in Bridge International Academies. But in Uganda, the group's 63 schools have been "ordered to shut down in a matter of weeks, leaving the lives of thousands of pupils in limbo." An anonymous reader quotes CNN: Uganda's High Court has described the Bridge International Academies...as unsanitary and unqualified, and has ordered it to close its doors in December because it ignored Uganda's national standards and put the "life and safety" of its 12,000 young students on the line. The Director of Education Standards for the Ministry, Huzaifa Mutazindwa, told CNN that the nursery and primary schools were not licensed, the teachers weren't qualified and that there was no record of its curriculum being approved.
Bridge's Uganda director denies the allegations, says the government hasn't even granted them an audience, and "suggested that the opposition against BIA was because the campuses competed against local state-run and private schools," according to CNN. Their reporter also found two educator advocates who complained that Bridge's schools were actually a privatized, profit-making entity targeting the poor. There's strong arguments on both sides, but it's all raising a lot of questions about how technology should be used in school programs, as well as how they should be funded.

Comments

Surprise! Surprise!

[HanzoSpam]

Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg have plenty of problems to solve in their own country. Why are they looking for trouble half a world away?

Re:Surprise! Surprise!

[Anonymous Coward]

Why are they looking for profit half a world away?

Because they are not the philanthropists that they pretend to be.

Despite all of his pretense of "helping" people in Africa and elsewhere, Bill Gates keeps getting richer, going from a net worth of $50 Billion to over $70 Billion in less than 5 years. And the Gates Foundation has invested at least 1/3 of its money (approx $10 Billion) in companies whose activities go directly against what the Foundation is supposedly trying to accomplish.

In Africa, the Foundation has invested more than $400 Million in oil companies responsible for much of the pollution many blame for respiratory problems and other afflictions among the local population. The Gates Foundation also has investments in sixty-nine of the worst polluting companies in the US and Canada. It holds investments in pharmaceutical companies whose drugs cost far beyond what most patients around the world can afford and the Foundation often lobbies on behalf of those companies for "Intellectual Property" protections that make obtaining low cost medicines more difficult.

Other companies in the Foundation’s portfolio have been accused of transgressions including forcing thousands of people to lose their homes, supporting child labor and defrauding and neglecting patients in need of medical care.

Not the only criticism

[guruevi]

https://www.unite4education.or...

They are literally commercializing schools similar to Trump University.. Didn't surprise me given this is an unholy union between Microsoft, Facebook and Pearson.

Re:both sides???

[Anonymous Coward]

Notice it is always "Anonymous"

What is always anonymous (other than me and you (assuming that 110010001000 isn't what your parents called you))? The news source is CNN. The reporter is Bianca Britton. Claims that the schools were not licensed and the teachers weren't qualified were made by Huzaifa Mutazindwa, Uganda's Director of Education Standards. Others are also quoted in the article...